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We must repeat: The Collective Being, the Authentic, There,
is at once Being and Intellectual-Principle and the Complete
Living Form; thus it includes the total of living things; the
Unity There is reproduced by the unity of this living universe in
the degree possible to it- for the sense-nature as such cannot
compass that transcendental unity- thus that Living-All is
inevitably Number-Entire: if the Number were not complete, the
All would be deficient to the extent of some number, and if every
number applicable to living things were not contained in it, it
would not be the all-comprehending Life-Form. Therefore, Number
exists before every living thing, before the collective
Life-Form.
Again: Man exists in the Intellectual and with him all other
living things, both by possession of Real-Being and because that
is the Life-Form Complete. Even the man of this sphere is a
member of the Intellectual since that is the Life-Form Complete;
every living thing by virtue of having life, is There, There in
the Life-form, and man is There also, in the Intellectual, in so
far as he is intellect, for all intelligences are severally
members of That. Now all this means Number There. Yet even in
Intellect Number is not present primally; its presence There is
the reckoning of the Acts of Intellectual-Principle; it tallies
with the justice in Intellectual-Principle, its moral wisdom, its
virtues, its knowledge, all whose possession makes That Principle
what it is.
But knowledge- must not this imply presence to the alien? No;
knowledge, known and knower are an identity; so with all the
rest; every member of Intellectual-Principle is therefore present
to it primally; justice, for example, is not accidental to it as
to soul in its character as soul, where these virtues are mainly
potential becoming actual by the intention towards
Intellectual-Principle and association with it.
Next we come to Being, fully realized, and this is the seat of
Number; by Number, Being brings forth the Beings; its movement is
planned to Number; it establishes the numbers of its offspring
before bringing them to be, in the same way as it establishes its
own unity by linking pure Being to the First: the numbers do not
link the lower to the First; it suffices that Being is so linked;
for Being, in taking form as Number, binds its members to itself.
As a unity, it suffers no division, remaining self-constant; as a
thing of division, containing its chosen total of members, it
knows that total and so brings forth Number, a phase therefore of
its content: its development of part is ruled by the powers of
Number, and the Beings it produces sum to that Number. Thus
Number, the primal and true, is Principle and source of actuality
to the Beings.
Hence it is that in our sphere, also, Number accompanies the
coming to be of particular things and to suppose another number
than the actual is to suppose the production of something else or
of nothing.
These then are the primal numbers; they are numerable; the
numbers of the other order are of a double character; as derived
from the first numbers they are themselves numerable but as
acting for those first they are measures of the rest of things,
numbering numbers and numerables. For how could they declare a
Decad save in the light of numbers within themselves?
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